A Friend in Need
by Lysa-uk
Summary: Mary's actions and reactions to Danny's father's death.
1. Chapter 1

Title: A Friend in Need

Author: Lysa-uk

Feedback: It's yours if you want it, just keep my name on it and give me a link.

Rating: PG-13/T

Characters: Mary/Danny

Summary: Mary's reaction and actions after she hears of Danny's father's death.

Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me, although I kinda wish I had a little Danny McCoy of my own. They belong to NBC, Gary Scott Thompson, Universal etc. No copyright intended.

Notes: You know how you feel like you've been working on something for a reeeeally long time? In this case it's true. This was actually started as soon as I read a summary of the second season finale. That's how long this has been in my head. I'm the first to admit I don't do plot and action, but I like characters. I like getting to know them and studying them. That's what this was in a way.

* * *

Mary Connell stood at the open doors of the private aircraft in the balmy night air and looked across the skyline of Vegas at the Montecito for what would probably be the last time.

There it was, standing in the middle of the strip that she had always loved so much, in a city that she adored. For anyone else looking at that building, it wouldn't seem out of place, it might not even catch their attention in the middle of the flashing lights and garish signs that were de rigour for this city. For Mary, though, it was always her focal point because of what it stood for. It was strong and solid, and it was always supposed to be like that, there was never supposed to be a time when it wasn't right where it was now, looking as it did.

The Vegas skyline had always been one of the most beautiful things that Mary had ever seen, and now, the next time she saw it and forever after that, there would always be something missing in the place where the Montecito stood, and even if another casino was built, nothing would ever fill the void she had left.

She felt Jake's hand on the small of her back, pressing against the curve of her spine in a silent gesture to move her inside.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

Mary nodded, tearing her eyes away from the view to look at him. "Yeah," she said. "It's just… I guess I'll just miss it."

He smiled, leaning over to place a kiss on her cheek. "Once you've been to Hawaii, you'll never want to come back," Jake told her.

For a second, Mary felt like screaming, at him for making her leave, at the world for changing on her so many times lately that it almost made her dizzy to keep up with it. But then she wondered… Why? Why should she be so angry? She had always been so afraid of everything changing, wasn't that the reason she had broken it off with Danny?

She had always been Mary Connell. Steadfast, loyal, honest… All words that more or less meant boring. Maybe now was the time to be someone else, someone different. No one was forcing her to leave, to get on that plane and fly away, but she saw now that she needed to, to see if there was a life beyond Vegas. More than that, she needed to see if she could live in it.

She took one last, long, lingering look at the Montecito, and then back at Jake, her eyes meeting his.

"Promise?" she asked.

And then she turned and left Las Vegas behind.


	2. Chapter 2

So, as it turned out, change was highly over-rated.

At least, that was the conclusion Mary came to as she looked out of the huge bay window in her suite

The view was spectacular from where she was standing. A private Hawaiian beach stretched out as far as she could see, with white sands that had barely been tread upon, and a clear blue sea that reflected the brilliant silver moon that was in residence in the late night sky. It was like something off a postcard, with the waves lapping gently yards away from the bedroom window, and the tall, leafy palm trees that surrounded the grounds.

So why was it that Mary wished she was back in Vegas, sitting in the bar on the last night the Montecito would be open with her friends?

Why was it that some things are just never how you expect them to be? She wondered to herself. Aesthetically, yeah, Hawaii was beautiful, that much she had seen as they'd landed a couple of hours ago at the small local airport. But she had expected…more. She had expected to arrive here and feel a huge weight lifted off her shoulders, the burden of all her problems from back home gone and forgotten. Instead, she felt worse than she had to begin with, thanks to a feeling in the pit of her stomach that refused to dwindle or disappear, a feeling that something had happened but she just didn't know about yet, and she had been trying to shrug it off ever since.

A car had taken them from the airport to the house, the building situated in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, secluded by the massive palm trees that lined the perimeter. She already had an idea of what the house looked like, thanks to the pictures Mike had printed off the internet and handed to her as they were walking through the casino floor, but when Jake had looked over at her as they drove through the tall, iron-gated and security-guarded gates and asked if she was okay, it was all she could do to stop herself from gaping open-mouthed and cursing.

She didn't know exactly how big the house was, but she was fairly certain that if half of Vegas were ever homeless, this was where they should come. The 'house' was exactly like Jake had described. Only, he had forgotten to add a couple of million dollars onto the value of the place, and forgot to mention the thousands of acres of land it covered. The term 'mansion' wouldn't have been far off the mark as far as she was concerned, but then, this was the girl who had lived and breathed the suburbs and city of Las Vegas her entire life, so she didn't know if her opinion counted for much.

The inside was just as impressive, open and spacious with luxurious furniture that probably cost a lot more than Mary's house did. An antique bureau sat in the corner of the sitting room, and it looked so old and expensive that Mary vowed never to go near it just in case she happened to damage it in some way. The furniture was so big it reminded her of when she was a kid and Danny's father had read 'Jack and the Beanstalk' to them, the pictures in the story book of the giant's house suddenly popping into her mind. The sofa and the armchairs looked so lush and comfortable that if she sat in them, she wondered if she'd just keep sinking until it swallowed her whole.

The dining room was about as big as the whole of Mystique, a long mahogany table in the centre of the room with matching chairs around it that made Mary wonder, if she had that table, did she actually know enough people to fill it? The kitchen was next, stainless steel and white, with more gadgets than Gunther would know what to do with. The bathrooms and bedrooms had followed, but Mary figured she must have left her brain back at the Montecito watching Gladys Knight singing, because it certainly wasn't here if the lack of intelligent conversation she was making was anything to go by.

It wasn't long after that that Mary had yawned, and Jake had asked if she wanted to go to bed, which then inevitably turned into an awkward and confusing conversation that made them both blush as he explained that he wasn't presuming anything and he meant sleeping, alone, in her room, honestly, because he didn't expect…

And Mary had been relieved because, while she suspected that their relationship would become physical at some point during this trip, she was certain that she wasn't ready for that now, not while her head was still so full of the past and unwilling to accept change, despite what she thought she was ready to embrace.

So, Jake had shown her to this very beautiful, very plush suite that was decorated very simplistically. Everything was a clean, bright white, so much so that walking into it Mary couldn't help thinking of a very sterile, albeit very nice, hospital room. Of course, once she was in the room, it was anything but. Despite the simplicity of the décor, the room was set off by a mahogany dressing table and mirror that Mary thought looked older than her grandmother, and a matching queen-sized bed, opposite the window where she was standing now.

There had been awkwardness again as they had both stood there in the middle of the room, in darkness because neither of them had flicked on the light as they came in and because it seemed like the moonlight coming through the window was enough to see by. They stood there silently, glancing back and forth at one another as they figured out what was next.

Despite Jake's proclamations, the look on his face was somehow hopeful, like he was waiting, fingers crossed behind his back, that she'd kiss him and say she wanted them to be together. But she couldn't. No matter how grateful she was to him for opening her eyes, and for being there when she needed someone different. She wanted to give him that, to give him herself, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, no matter how her feelings for him were growing, and she felt guilt inside of her because of that.

Instead, after what seemed like hours had passed, Jake had leaned in and placed a very sweet, chaste kiss on her cheek. He smiled and left the room, wishing her sweet dreams as he closed the door and left her alone with her thoughts.

_Alone,_ she thought to herself now, as she left her place by the window to find her suitcase that had been left by the door to the bathroom. That was funny. Okay, so maybe not in a 'ha-ha' way, but it did seem weird that in her entire life, she hated being alone and yet now she was welcoming it. She had always done everything she possibly could to avoid spending time in her own company. It wasn't that she didn't like who she was or anything as narcissistic as that, it was more like when she was alone, she always somehow felt like she was waiting for…

Flashes of her father ran through her mind, drunk and slobbering, opening her bedroom door in the middle of the night, asking if she was awake while she cowered under the comforter, eyes scrunched closed so hard that it made her see stars, praying for him to go away.

She shook her head to herself, taking a lungful of air when she realised that she had stopped breathing, sinking down onto the well-padded armchair next to the bed for just a second until her legs stopped feeling like jelly and threatening to give way underneath her. She swallowed back the lump that was forming deep in her throat, refusing to cry over that sorry bastard when she had already wasted so many tears on him in the past.

She pulled on the suitcase next to her, laying it flat in the middle of the room to open it and find something to sleep in. Rummaging through the masses of clothes packed – well, she had to be prepared for every eventuality, didn't she? – she eventually found what she was looking for and disappeared with them in hand into the spacious bathroom.

Ten minutes and way too many jet sprays from the power shower later, she picked her way around the still-open luggage, pulling a comb through her hair and dressed in a tank top and shorts. She bent to flip the suitcase closed and tried to move it. The comb was moved to her mouth, gripped between her teeth, both hands on the handle of the case to move it. One heave, two heaves… Yeah, that baby wasn't moving anywhere without a forklift behind it. She shrugged to herself after the fifth attempt, conceding defeat and silently noting to remember it was there if she got up in the middle of the night so that she didn't fall over it.

She moved the comb from her mouth, pulling a face at the hair that had transferred to her lips, her hand wiping over it as she walked over to the bed and sat on the end. She still hadn't bothered turning on a light, although the bathroom had been an entirely different story, so she sat there in the light of the moon, thinking about what to do next.

Mary knew that she wasn't particularly tired, despite the obviously Oscar-winning performance she had given to Jake earlier, but she still felt obligated to get into bed, as if to say to herself 'hey, look, I wasn't really lying, honestly' more than anything else. She moved to the side of the bed, pulling back crisp white sheets that she was guessing had never been slept in before and never would be again after she had vacated the room, and climbed under them, lying on her side to look out of the window.

Light filtered in through the window, streams of moonlight that bounced off of the hard marble floor and onto the walls to make patterns and shapes that reminded Mary of earlier times in her life. She remembered being a teenager, when she had hidden in Danny's room for weeks. Sometimes, on the good nights, the moon and stars would shine in like this and they'd lie awake for hours trying make out faces or animals, laughing until the sun came up. That had been a good time in her life, when she knew exactly what she wanted and how she felt.

Too bad she didn't feel that way now.

It was funny how something so inanimate can change your life so much. The Montecito had given Mary everything that she had ever wanted; security and stability, confidence and a family. The only time she had ever felt any of those things before was when she had been with Danny, but she'd learned fast that she shouldn't always count on him to be around. He had his own life to lead, the proof of that was him leaving for the Marines, and while she had always been so sure that they'd end up together, she'd had to live without him, despite the pain it caused her.

The people she had gotten to know through her job were the people she knew she'd be friends with throughout her life, and she would be forever grateful for that, and it seemed stupid to be so upset about a building that just wouldn't be there anymore. But walking out of the Montecito for what she felt would be the last time had filled her with sadness. That building, it's employees, everything that it was…it had been a huge part of her life. She had eaten there, slept there, shopped there, made love there…

And soon, it would be gone. So many memories wiped out with the flick of a switch and a ton of explosives.

It probably wasn't just the building. Maybe it was the fact that she wouldn't be seeing them every day like before…Nessa, Sam, Delinda, Ed, Mike…Danny.

Huh. Danny. There was a whole other can of worms that she didn't think would be a good idea to open, especially not now.

It would be a very bad idea to think about the only guy she had ever loved in her whole life, to think about the reason why she was here in this house with someone who would never measure up to the person who had been with her through everything.

Yep, definitely a bad idea.

With the can opened and the worms wriggling around everywhere, Mary turned onto her back, shaking her head to admonish herself for doing exactly what she said she wouldn't. She let out a frustrated sigh, the thought of closing her eyes completely out of the question. One good thing about working in a casino? You get used to the lack of sleep. You can function for days with just a few hours of shut-eye. Learn ways to look as fresh as a daisy when you feel more like the dirt it's sat in. Of course, at times like this it was more of a hindrance than it was a help when all she wanted was for this day to end.

The entire purpose of her being here, being with Jake at all, was supposed to make her move on. Jake was supposed to help her get over Danny, supposed to help her get over losing her job and the Montecito. It wasn't working, none of it. When she got on that plane a few hours ago, she had been certain that change was what she wanted and needed. But she didn't want it, and as many times as she had told herself that she did, she was fooling herself. She knew now that she liked who she was, she liked her life, she was being forced to change because she had no control of what was happening, back in Vegas or right here and now.

She felt like screaming, asking why it couldn't just be simple like it used to be. She felt so ungrateful, lying here in this beautiful room in this beautiful house, a guy who she knew would give her the world if she asked, who had told her more than a few times how much he cared for her just a few doors away.

But it wasn't enough.

Jake was…well, he was one of the most amazing, romantic guys she had ever met. He was handsome, and sweet, and he wanted to sweep her off her feet. And God, Mary wanted to be swept. More than anything, she wanted to give him her heart, because he'd take such good care of it. Somehow, when she looked at him, she knew that he would be good to her, take care of her and love her. Most women would kill for that kind of guy, but to Mary… To Mary he was second choice.

She hated using that term because it implied that he was good enough. The truth was, he **was** good enough. He was all kinds of good. If anything, it was the other way around. She wasn't good enough for him, she knew that, because the reason why she was here was because he was the guy who could never hurt her the way Danny had in the past. He was the one she wasn't afraid of being with and loving. Jake was the safe option because she had already risked so much on one Mr McCoy

The past few months had been like some kind of hell between them after what happened, awkward and weird and guarded and strained, and Mary hated that feeling. Things weren't meant to be like that between them. They were best friends, through everything, and they were maybe, hopefully, starting to get that back because as much as she had been hurt, there was no way she wanted to know what it was like to not have him in her life, and if she was with Jake, she was less likely to be hurt by him again.

It wasn't that she didn't care for Jake, because she honestly did. Every day, she felt more for him, and the last thing she wanted to do was be here under false pretences, but she knew that no matter what, no matter how her feelings for Jake grew, Danny would always be Mary's first… Everything. She had always thought that he would be her last everything, too, but it looked like that wasn't so likely.

Danny had always been a contradiction of himself, and his feelings for her were no exception to that rule. He didn't want to be with her, but he didn't want anyone else to be either. He loved her, but just as a friend, until suddenly something happened to make him think otherwise. Since the engagement had been broken off, it was obvious what he wanted and that whatever they had together wasn't as real for him as it always had been for her.

So, Mary decided, it was time to make a choice. Live in the past, with memories and ghosts, in blind hope that everything would work out. Or live in the future, be with a guy who cared for her and who could make her happy.

Was that actually a choice? Everything in her past was either gone or it had changed in some way, so all that was left was the future, whether she wanted it or not.

Okay, so in the morning, she'd wake up with enthusiasm and vigour, and she'd give Jake a huge kiss to let him know that she was really there, really with him. Things would be good. She could make them good.

So then why did she still have that gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her that something was very, very wrong?

As if to answer the question, a sharp trilling sounded in the room. The noise made Mary start, causing her to sit bolt upright with her hand on her chest to keep her heart from jumping out of it. It only took a second to realise she knew the sound, recognised it as her cell phone, and carefully listened as the ringing continued to try and figure out exactly where it was coming from. She distinctly remembered putting it in her purse before they left Vegas, but then came the task of remembering where she had put the purse.

She pulled back the sheets and tried to pick out in the dark where she could have dropped her purse, but apparently she wasn't looking where she was going and let out a yelp when she stubbed her toe on the suitcase that still lay in the middle of the floor. Eventually she found the armchair in the darkened room, locating the sound at the back of the cushion, and pulled open the bag to grab the phone.

She checked the caller display, seeing Mike's name flashing at her as she crossed back over the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She pulled her legs up and crossed them, flipping open the small cell phone and putting it to her ear curiously. Mike never called her – well, hardly ever, anyway. Mike was more known for his graphic text jokes than anything else.

"Hello?" she said.

She couldn't hear anyone at the other end of the line, just the sound of someone knocking, pretty heavily by the sound of it, followed by muffled yelling. Okay, that scared her.

"Hello?" she said again, this time louder and even she could pick out the panic in her voice, but all she heard was someone moving the phone around at the other end of the line.

She opened her mouth to ask again, when there was a reply.

"Mary?" A voice asked, and she heard herself let out a breath of relief at Mike's voice. "Mary, are you there?"

She heard more voices, a male and female, and Mike muttered something to them before he got back to her.

"Yeah, I'm here," she told him, but the sound of his voice was strange. Mike was pretty much always smiling, even if you couldn't see it in his face, you could hear it in his voice. Mary couldn't hear anything now. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Well, uh…" he said, and all she detected from him was that he was nervous, or upset, and suddenly Mary was very, very afraid.

"Mike," she said anxiously, "What's going on?"

"There…" and there was a moment when it sounded like he couldn't really speak. "There was an accident," he finally said, and Mary felt like she was going to throw up. Danny flashed through her mind and she couldn't breath, couldn't think. She sat there with the cell phone still pressed against her ear.

"Danny's okay," Mike said quickly, but not quickly enough because he'd only just worked out how that statement must have scared her. "He's okay," Mike clarified, and Mary nearly choked on the huge gulp of air she had to take to fill her lungs. "He wasn't involved."

"Then, what…?" she managed to say.

"It's his dad, Mary," he told her. "He died."

She closed her eyes, "Oh, my God…" she said quietly.

"I just…" Mike said seriously, "I don't know what to do."

Mary felt herself nodding in the dark. "It's okay, Mike," she told him. "I'm on my way."


	3. Chapter 3

The phone dropped to her side, falling closed as it hit the mattress and bounced, leaving Mary Connell feeling… What? What did she feel?

She felt tears sliding down her cheek, expected given the situation, but when it had happened she didn't know. She tried to move, but it felt like she was glued to where she sat, stuck in that same position. She shook her head to herself – No, this wasn't what she should be doing, thinking of herself and of how much Danny's father had meant to her. She'd think about that later, sometime when she wasn't needed somewhere else right now.

She determinedly wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, drying it again on the white linen of the sheets she was sitting on. She grabbed her cell phone, found Danny's name on speed dial and hit the call button. The line didn't even ring, all she got was a message saying the phone was switched off and clicked straight over to the answer machine. It wasn't unexpected, but it still gave her a chill.

"Hi," she said into the phone, her voice shakey and broken. "Danny, it's me. Listen, Mike just called to tell me… Call me when you get this message. Please, Danny, I just need to know that you're okay. Please… Just call me, okay?"

She flipped the phone closed again, peeling herself out of the position she was sitting in and kneeling next to the suitcase on the floor. Again, she rummaged through her belongings for something to wear, eventually coming up with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. She rushed herself into the bathroom, re-appearing a few moments later with the clothes she had just taken off and the clothes that she had left in there when she had taken a shower. _Wow,_ she thought to herself as she stuffed them into the suitcase without folding them, _three costume changes in one day. Delinda would be so proud._

She went around the room, gathering everything that belonged to her, which wasn't much since she'd neglected to unpack. A fact she was more than thankful for now. Finding a pair of shoes and a light jacket in her luggage, she threw them on and pocketing the cell phone as she flipped the case closed again and zipped it up.

She pulled on the case to stand it up so she could pull it out, but it didn't seem to want to move. She thought she might have learnt since she tried this not an hour ago and had the same result, but she hefted again, hoping for some sudden burst of strength. No, definitely not moving, and now was not the time to care. She shook her head to herself, resolving to leave it where it was. She had other clothes, and she would figure out some way of getting it back, but right now it didn't matter.

She left the room, pulling out her cell phone as she closed the bedroom door behind her and hit the redial button on Danny's number. Once again, it switched straight to voicemail, and Mary felt her heart thudding against her chest.

"Danny," she said impatiently. "Danny, it's me, again. Listen, please call me, okay? I just want to hear your voice. I just want to speak to you. Please, as soon as you get this…"

And then, she said something she swore she'd never say to him again. "I love you…"

She paused where she stood, taking a deep breath to calm herself – like that was an option – and looked down the long, dark hall of the dark house. Which room had Jake said was his?

There were doors – lot of them – but Mary didn't have the time or the inclination to try them all. _Remember, remember…_ she urged herself. She thought back to earlier, when he was showing her around. She glanced at them in turn. _That one's a bathroom, that one's…_ Why was she making this so difficult? There was no one else in the house other than them. She opened one door, then another…

Okay, what was the plan? She silently asked herself. Take a cab to the airport and wait for a flight? It was the only thing, wasn't it? She could phone ahead before she got there, get herself put on standby for any outgoing flights. Driving was certainly out of the question, what with the whole ocean thing…

She opened another door, stopping in her tracks when she saw the guy sleeping in the bed. He looked sweet when he slept, she thought, and she wondered absently if she would ever get to see him sleep again. That was swiftly followed by a wave of guilt that she was thinking of something so trivial after what had happened.

"Jake?" she said quietly, feeling her throat blocked by something. When he didn't stir, she tried again, "Jake?" Her voice was a little louder this time, and in return he made a small noise and rolled onto his back.

Mary cleared her throat and tried once more. "Jake?" she said, and she realised it had come out louder than she had intended when she made herself start in the otherwise silent room.

Jake sat bolt upright in his bed, the sheet that had been covering him falling to his waist to reveal a naked torso.

It took a second to register for Mary, but as soon as she recovered her hand flew up to her eyes to cover them because she didn't really want to know if he slept in the nude.

"Mary," he said, when he looked at her, suddenly wide-awake. While she couldn't see him, she could hear the pleasant surprise in his voice. "Hi."

"Hi," she said quickly, "I'm sorry for…"

"Hey, it's okay," he told her, pulling the sheet around himself. He watched her, standing there with her hand over her eyes, and a smile began to form. Until he realised there was a jacket and shoes, and suddenly he felt very under-dressed for this conversation. "Are you going someplace?" he asked.

Mary removed her hand, looking at him and feeling thankful it was dark so he couldn't see the tears welling in her eyes. "Yeah," she said slowly. "I… I have to go back to Vegas."

He immediately looked concerned and she knew she'd always be grateful for that. "Is something wrong?" he asked.

She tried to breathe steadily, suddenly finding her own hands very interesting. "There is," she confirmed. "Danny…" she said as she looked back up at him, but that seemed to be all she could manage before she felt that choking sensation again.

Jake looked blankly back at her, and she could almost hear him thinking, _Again? _Because it felt like all she ever did was say his name and talk about him, but what was she supposed to do when he was such a big part of her past?

"He, uh…" she began, and then she was fidgeting again, fingers twisting and intertwining. "His father died."

Jake didn't reply, just turned to reach for the nightstand at the side of the bed and grabbed his cell phone. He pressed a sequence into the number pad and waited for a reply on the other end of the line.

"It's me," he said. "Make sure the plane's ready to take us back to Vegas. We'll be there in half an hour."

"No," Mary said, her hands up and shaking her head. "Jake, you don't have to do this," she told him. "I didn't mean for… I mean, I only came in here to tell you I was leaving. I didn't want you to think I just left without telling you why."

"I know," he told her, the call finished. "I want to do this for you."

And then he smiled, and Mary knew this was just another thing that proved what a great guy he was. In other circumstances, she maybe would've argued some more that it wasn't necessary, but on this occasion speed was definitely of the essence.

She nodded, and turned to leave while Jake changed, checking her watch and pulling out her cell phone yet again.


	4. Chapter 4

_Ten times,_ Mary said to herself as she ended yet another voicemail message to Danny's phone. Ten times she had tried calling him since she had spoken to Mike, and he hadn't answered once. She had even tried his home number too many times to count, even though she knew he wouldn't be there, just to be sure. She understood why he'd be ignoring his cell, or if he had turned it off completely, but she just needed to speak to him, needed to hear his voice, because the more time that passed by…

She had known him forever and at times she would think that she knew absolutely everything there was about him, and then he'd do something completely unpredictable and she'd be left wondering to herself if she really knew anything. That was one of the things that was scaring her right now.

It wasn't completely out of the realms of possibility that he'd do something stupid. Sometimes he was even known for it. When they were teenagers and he'd found out what his father had done to her, he'd beaten the crap out of him so badly that her father had been in the hospital for a week. When Greg died, Danny went after the bastards responsible – not that she blamed him. It just didn't seem to compute with him in these situations that it might be dangerous and that he could be hurt. He was always running on adrenaline, and that wasn't particularly a good thing.

She shifted in her seat for the thousandth time on the short flight, peering out of the window as the Vegas skyline came into view once again. She had been so sure that everything would be different when she got back here, when the Montecito was gone. She was so glad that, for now at least, it was the same because she couldn't stand the thought of something else that she loved being gone.

She could feel her fingertips gripping at the leather arms of the chair she was in, although she didn't even realise she was doing it until Jake's hand moved over hers to still it. She glanced at him, a small smile on her face, for his benefit only, because she really couldn't see anything to smile about. She was grateful to him, though, for the fact that he was doing this for her, and for his company. If he hadn't been kind enough to fly her back home, she'd probably still be sat in a Hawaiian airport, pacing and fidgeting. She was doing the same thing now, of course, minus the pacing, but at least she was closer to home. Besides, with Jake here she could stop herself from thinking about all of those things that she was scared of.

Things like how much she was going to miss Danny's dad. It seemed dumb if you said it aloud, that you were going to miss your best friend's dad, but it was entirely different when he just so happened to be the only guy she had ever trusted, other than Danny. He was the guy who made sure she ate dinner when she was at their house all the time when they were growing up. He was the one who hugged her when she cried, even when she couldn't tell him why she was crying.

He was the one who took her in when things went bad with her father. She had never told him what happened to her, but she was sure Danny had, although neither of them let on about it. He even gave Danny an alibi when the police came knocking after they had found her father, bruised and bloody in the kitchen after his beating. Her father wouldn't tell, of course, because aside from getting beaten up by a teenager, he'd been worried about the police finding out about his sick, dirty little secret.

He was the one who had called her every week ever since she had moved out of the house, just to check in, and called her his daughter when he introduced her to clients when she dropped by the site to say hi. He was the one who said 'finally!' when she and Danny told him about their engagement, and told her she'd always be part of the family when they broke up. He was the one who warned her when she met Jake that he'd better take care of her or he'd have to hurt him.

Every time she had felt her father's hands on her, it had disgusted her so much that she'd think to herself that all dads were like that, that was what they did, but then she'd spend time at the McCoy's and remember that it wasn't true, and she'd tell herself to always remember that.

He was the guy she considered her father, because the one she was born with sure as hell wasn't worthy of the name. The reason why she was the person she was…that was in part because of him. He was the guy who made her want all the things she did from Danny – husband, kids, home – because he made her see what it was really like to be in a family.

He had done so much for her, and yet she had been relieved when Mike told her he was dead. Mike had told her that something had happened, that there had been an accident, and her thoughts had immediately jumped to Danny. She had felt her heart in her throat and had felt all the air rush out of her body at the thought that he was gone or hurt. She swallowed down a pang of guilt brought on by thinking about it. When she found out it wasn't him, she had been able to breathe again. She had been relieved, and now the guilt was eating her from the inside out.

She didn't realise she was crying again until a tear fell from her face and landed in the hand that was now sitting in her lap. She quickly dried it on her jeans, bringing the hand to her cheek to wipe away the others before they fell.

Jake squeezed her hand again, just as the pilot announced they were starting their descent and that they'd be touching down shortly.

She felt Jake's arm nudge her, prompting her to look at him.

"You okay?" he asked her.

She smiled, "No," she told him.

He just nodded, and held her hand tighter.


	5. Chapter 5

Mary counted the turns the car took as it moved through the sleeping suburbs of Las Vegas. One, two, three… With every one taken and every street sign passed, she felt her heart beat quicker every time. They were close now, she didn't need to look out of the window to know that. She felt it because this was her home, her life, and she knew how to get to the McCoy's house from pretty much everywhere in this town.

"Oh, God…" she heard herself mutter as she shifted on the back seat of the black limousine that had collected her and Jake as they had landed. They turned another corner, and she knew they were less than a block away.

And then they were there. The car came to a slow stop at the kerb by the side of the driveway. Danny's car was there, parked askew, probably in a hurry, and if she needed any kind of proof that he was in a bad way, that was it. That car had been his pride and joy, ever since he was small. The car had belonged to his mother, and when he was old enough, he and his father had spent hours restoring it after it had been sat in storage for god knew how long.

She took a deep breath when that light-headed feeling came back. She sat forward on the leather seat, her hand on the door to open it after she had told the driver it was okay, and she caught Jake's movement out of the corner of her eye.

When she looked at him, his movements were mimicking hers, his hand on the door, and she put her hand on his arm to halt him.

He looked at her, already knowing what she was going to say. "You shouldn't do this alone," he told her.

She smiled. "I should," she said. "I have to."

"Look," he said softly, "I know that Danny isn't going to be any state to see anyone, let alone me. I'll wait outside, Scouts Honour."

"Were you in the Scouts?"

"No, but the promise still stands."

"Jake…" she began, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Jake, but I really think it would be best if you left."

She saw his face fall, just a fraction, and she realised there were a hundred better ways to phrase that as soon as the words were out of her mouth. It was something that would hardly be noticed at all if you weren't looking too closely, but it was there. She had hurt him, she knew it, but on her list of priorities right now, he hardly rated.

"I am sorry," she repeated, and that's when he looked away from her, his eyes dropping down to his lap for a second and then moving back towards her face. "I really appreciate everything you've done for me, for getting me here so quickly and for understanding. It's just…" she paused, "I just don't think it would be fair for you to be here. For you or Danny."

"And he's your priority, right?" he asked, the smallest hint of bitterness in his voice that made her pull her hand from his arm.

"Yes," she told him seriously and without hesitation. "He has to be. He's my best friend."

"And is that it?" he asked.

Mary looked taken aback, speechless for a moment until she recovered. "Seriously?" she asked. "You want to discuss this now? Your sense of timing really sucks, you know that?"

His expression was instantly apologetic as he reached out for her as she opened the door, one foot on the sidewalk, "Mary—"

"No, Jake," she said, interrupting him, already out of the car. "There is no way that I'm going to do this now."

"Look, I didn't mean to—"

"Whatever," she told him, standing in the open doorway.

He moved quickly, jumping out of the car and jogging around to her side. He moved his hands to her arms to still her before she could go anywhere. "I'm sorry," he told her, one hand moving to her chin to lift her face to look at him. "That wasn't meant to come out like that," he said. "I just want to be here for you."

She glanced at the house, and then back at Jake, shaking her head. "Fine," she said reluctantly, because here and now really wasn't the time to be arguing. "But wait outside, okay?"

She didn't even wait for an answer before she pulled herself out of his grasp and turned towards the driveway, taking slow steps towards the big front porch that she and Danny had re-painted white just before he had left for the Marines.

She could see that the house was in darkness, no lights on inside, none outside, but by the glow of the moon she could make out three figures standing there on the porch. Two standing, both male, and she knew who they were right away. The third, however, was unfamiliar, sitting on the porch swing where she and Danny used to sway for hours after dinner.

She got closer, and she knew Jake was behind her from the sound of his feet on the gravel of the drive as it crunched under him, but he didn't get any closer to her, which was a good thing because if he tried to crowd her right now she was likely to turn around and hit him.

Ed came forward from the shadows of the house, looking tired and worried, unusual things to see in someone who hardly ever exhibited any weakness, and she knew it was more than what was going on now that was making him this way. Mike followed him, the both of them coming down the few steps to meet her, nodding their acknowledgement to Jake behind her.

Ed was there first, hugging her tightly, not saying anything but his strength spoke volumes, and that was what she appreciated. He pulled back, kissing her forehead briefly before Mike took his place, his arms around Mary, not as strong and sure as Ed's, but she was grateful all the same.

"Sorry for calling," he told her as he released her. "I didn't mean to interrupt your—"

"Hey," she said, her hand moving to take his. "I told you, it's okay."

"I know Mr McCoy meant a lot to you," he said, shaking his head. "I thought you should know. Plus, we didn't know what to do about Danny, and…" He let the end of the sentence linger when Mary visibly flinched at his name, and she felt Ed's hand on her shoulder.

Mike looked at her sadly. "He won't open up. He locked himself in. he won't open the door, he won't talk to us

She felt herself nod gently as she looked up at the house. It was then that Mary saw the women standing up there, recognising her as Jenny Cho.

"Have you spoken to him?" Mary asked.

"No," Jenny replied. "He took off pretty much as soon as I told him what happened."

"He had us pretty worried," Ed said. "We didn't know where to start looking until Metro spotted his car a few blocks away running a red light." He shook his head to himself. "Looking back, it seems pretty obvious that he'd come here."

"It makes sense," Mary said.

"I didn't even have to tell you where we were," Mike said with a knowing smile. "You knew he'd come here, didn't you?"

"We haven't actually seen him yet," Jenny said. "The lights have been off the whole time we've been here. No sign of movement inside. I'm not even convinced he's here."

"His car's here," Mike pointed out.

"He could've left it here," Jenny replied. "Gone somewhere on foot."

"He's here," Mary said, certainty in her voice.

"We've been knocking," Jenny told her, sharpness in her voice that Mary didn't particularly care about now, irritation perfectly obvious in her stance and her face. "We've shouted through the door, tried his cell… He hasn't replied once."

"He's here," Mary repeated.

"How do you know?"

Mary shrugged, "I just know."

She let go of Mike's hand and started up the stairs. One, two, three, four… Were there always this many steps? She didn't remember it taking this long before. She reached the porch, passing the spot where Jenny was now standing with her arms crossed over her chest, looking every inch the determined detective. At some other time, Mary might have felt intimidated, but right now it didn't even register.

She fished into her jacket pocket, pulling out the bunch of keys she had grabbed from her purse on her way out of her room at Jake's house in Hawaii, trying to examine each of them in the non-light they were standing in. Finally, she had the one she was looking for, and she stepped towards the door and placed it in the lock.

"Wait a minute," Jenny said, confused. "You have a key?"

Mary hardly replied, just looked over at her and shrugged, feeling the turn of the lock in her palm and hearing it click open.

"I don't think this is exactly right," Jenny interrupted, frustration in her voice and her hands up defensively.

No one said anything as Mary opened the door and let herself into the house. Ed and Mike climbed the few steps back up to the entrance of the house, Ed placing a hand on Jenny's shoulder and gently shaking his head to her.

"You know this is technically breaking and entering, don't you?" she said to him accusingly.

Ed shrugged. "Nobody broke anything," he told her. "See?" he said gesturing to Mary, "She has a key."

"Don't you think we should respect Danny's privacy?"

"I think **we** should," Ed told her. "Mary…" he said thoughtfully. "Well, Mary's different."

"Why?"

"Has Danny ever talked about Mary?" Mike asked.

"Yes."

"Have you ever seen them together?"

"Yes."

Mike nodded, a wistful look on his face. "That's why," he said simply.

_Gee, thanks,_ Mary thought to herself, looking back at them through the stained glass of the old front door. _Keep piling on the pressure, Mike._

And then she saw Jake, standing alone at the foot of the porch, a realisation coming over him. She could see as he listened to Mike's words and took them in, could almost hear him telling himself that he knew it, that this was what he knew would happen.

And then she watched him walk back to the waiting limousine and drive away.


	6. Chapter 6

It felt almost spooky, Mary thought to herself. To be standing in this old, weathered house in the middle of the night, the place in total darkness. Wasn't that how all the best horror movies began? But that was he word. Almost. But it didn't make her afraid to be here – at least, not for that reason. She was scared because of something entirely different, and it had nothing to do with the house.

She stood in the hall of the big, two storey building where she had practically grown up. Even though the darkness was seeping into it, she could make out the things that were so familiar to her.

She carefully walked across the hardwood floors into the living room. It had never been redecorated in the entire time she had known Danny. Danny's mom had furnished the place entirely before her son had even been born, and even now, twenty-something years later, it still didn't look like it had aged. An antique wooden cabinet sat at one end of the room, a real antique that been placed there years ago, not like something out of Jakes house that was more likely to have been bought at a store somewhere because it was quaint or something. This was real, and homely, and reminded her of family. It sat out of the way, but it still drew your attention when you walked into the room like a focal point, the surfaces always gleaming, no matter what, and smelling of furniture polish.

An old fireplace that Danny's dad had built from scratch, with a wood-burning fire inside – not that there was ever a fire lit, of course, when Vegas in the summer was like a form of torture and the winters were warmed by radiators hidden around the house. An entertainment centre sat in one corner of the room, the finish almost a replica of the cabinet opposite, but not quite the same if you looked at them both carefully.

A sofa and a matching armchair were in the middle of the room, big and over-stuffed to the eye, despite their age, but once you sat on them, they moulded to every part of your body in such a way that you never wanted to move. Mary had slept on that sofa so many times over the years, sometimes when they were supposed to be watching a movie, and sometimes just because she couldn't help it. It had felt nice, to fall asleep there with Danny lying on the floor next to her because he didn't want her to wake up alone. She also remembered when they were teenagers and had been making out there, Danny lying on top of her, when his father had walked in on them.

She smiled to herself, moving through the house into the dining room with its big mahogany table and the eight matching chairs around it. Mary only ever remembered three people sat around it – herself, Danny and his father, and Danny used to say that he never knew why they didn't just get rid of it, but she knew it would never have felt the same without it.

Everywhere she looked there was a memory; a picture, an event, and it was funny that she had never felt that way about the house she had shared with her father.

A photograph sat on the sideboard that Mary had always thought was the most beautiful thing, and she tentatively picked up sparkling silver frame that surrounded the image of Mrs McCoy. Mary didn't really have many memories of Danny's mother. She had died when they were too young to really understand what was happening, but she had the picture in her head of a woman with honey-blonde hair, bright blue eyes and slim frame. She remembered that she was always smiling, and one time, when Mary had rushed out of her house one morning, Mrs McCoy had sat her on her knee and combed her hair through. She had tied it into pig-tails with some pink ribbon she kept in her sewing box, and whispered that one day she hoped Danny would have a little sister, and that she wanted her to be just like Mary. It wasn't long after then that she had passed away.

Mary turned to go back into the hall. It was obvious that Danny wasn't down here anywhere, not that she was expecting him to be because she had a feeling she knew exactly where he was, and it dawned on her that this was probably the worst time to go sauntering down memory lane.

But she couldn't help it, she knew that a soon as she started up the long staircase up to the second floor. Her hand ran along the smooth varnished banister that she and Danny had both slid down everyday when they were kids, until that one time when Danny fell and broke his arm, and they had never tried it again.

Up she climbed, finally reaching the long hallway she had tiptoed down too many times to count. She passed the room that used to be hers, the one that had originally been the guest room, and she couldn't resist peering inside. It had once been an empty-feeling room, decorated sparsely, tasteful but very plain, and then Mr McCoy had painted it pink when she started staying over all the time. He had even bought pink sheets and covers for the comforter so everything matched and put a sign on the door that said her name. She had been so touched by it that she had cried, and then cooked for them all. It still smelt of her, of her past, her pictures were still pinned to the wall and she guessed her old school books probably still sat in the cupboards.

She remembered back then, back when she lived here, that when things were going bad for her, at school or if her father had been waiting outside of the school claiming he loved her and that he needed to talk to her, she would come home and climb under the covers of the bed. She'd bury herself in the pillow and pull the comforter over her head, and things would get better. What were the odds she wouldn't feel that way now if she did that? Pretty high, she reckoned. And there definitely wouldn't be Danny to come in with a cup of hot cocoa like he did then, no matter what the weather outside, to coax her out of her hiding place with a joke or by tickling her, just making things okay by being there.

She passed the master bedroom, again pushing open the door to peer inside. As always, it was tidy, neat, clean… Danny's father had never been one of those guys who didn't know what a vacuum cleaner was. Mary guessed it was because he'd had to learn pretty quickly how to keep a house as well as knowing how to build one once he and Danny were left alone.

The room looked like it'd had a lick of paint or two in the past few years – still the same colour, but a little brighter than the last time she'd seen it a couple of years back. Still in pride of place, though, was the photograph of Mr and Mrs McCoy on their wedding day, looking happy and in love and full of new beginnings. Mary had always hoped that her and Danny's picture would stand next to that someday.

Yeah, that was what she should be thinking about right now.

She shook her head, chastising herself for the thought even entering her head. But she couldn't stop it. Maybe it was being back in this house after so long, but her past flooded her, and she couldn't turn it off.

Was it bad that she still wanted the same things that she wanted then? That after everything, all the time that had passed and the months of telling herself that it would never happen, that it was useless, that she wasn't still in love with him…she believed that they were supposed to be together?

She looked around the room, at the bed that would probably never be slept in again, at the hard hat sat on the dresser and the shirt thrown across the back of the chair that would never be worn again. Suddenly, it all seemed so final and real, and she had to leave before she started crying again.

She could feel her heart thumping in her chest and her palms sweating as she pulled the bedroom door closed behind her and started down the hall again. This was the part that she hadn't thought through. When she'd heard the news, she'd just known that she had to get back here. On the way, she just needed to be at this house, in this little cocoon of safety that it had always been with him, with Danny. She had known, before Mike mentioned anything, that he'd be here. As many times as she had doubted over the years that she really knew him as well as she thought, this just proved that inside out, backwards and forwards, Danny McCoy was ingrained into her, and she'd known he would want to be somewhere he felt he belonged.

She had briefly thought about his dad's office or his work site, but the office had never felt like Mr McCoy and he'd never seemed entirely comfortable there. She thought about the site because that business was always supposed to be 'McCoy & Son', but then she remembered that they'd just finished a job and the next one wouldn't start until next week. Besides, being there would fill him with guilt, not that he wouldn't feel that way anyway.

So that had left the house. Here she was, walking down the hall with tiny steps, more afraid of this than of anything else in her life. She been anxious on the plane, on the way over here, but she'd never thought about what she'd do once she was actually here. Soon, she would be standing opposite him, and she had absolutely no idea what to do. She'd known that she needed to be here with him, and in a very short space of time, she would be. But then what? Hug him? Tell him everything would be okay? How could she when everything just felt so…wrong?

She stood in front of the solid pine door that was half-open, half-closed, and she took a deep breath. She wanted to help him, so much that it hurt her to think about the pain he was in, but how could she possible make things better? If he didn't answer the door to the guys outside, it was very possible that he didn't want to see anyone at all, and that probably included her. Maybe she should leave, she thought. All she had to do was turn back and walk the other way, let him deal with it in his own way.

_Yeah,_ a voice inside of her said, _because letting Danny deal with things his own way always works out so well. Remember what happened when he came back from service?_

She put her hand to the door, feeling the grain of the wood on her fingers. She was never going to leave him alone, it wasn't even an option. She was scared, yeah, but when it came to Danny, she'd do anything. Even if she walked in there and he told her to leave, she'd just sit outside his room and wait until he was ready. At least then she'd know that she'd tried, and he'd know that she cared, although he couldn't possibly not know that already.

Her hand moved up to the name plate that was ever-so-slightly askew. When they were about thirteen or so, Danny and Greg had been wrestling in Danny's room, while Mary had just sat watching them, laughing at them being such idiots. She wasn't laughing, though, when they fell into the closed door and knocked it from its hinges. Mr McCoy had ran upstairs, checked they were both okay, and then told them that they both had to pay for a new one and hang it themselves. It had taken the better part of a month for them to save up enough money, and almost as long for them to figure out how to put it up. But they did it, and when they were done, Danny had let Mary use a drill for the first time in her life to put the name sign back up. He hadn't said anything when it wasn't straight, hadn't corrected it, just threw an arm over her shoulders and said that now he'd think of her every time he went in his room. Her fingers ran along the lettering engraved there, the sign matching the one a few doors down on the room that had been hers, and she wondered if he had really meant that.

She straightened herself up, moved her hand to the doorknob and pushed.

His room had always been blue – different shades of it through the years, but always blue. It had been green for maybe a week in his mid-teens when Mary had told him she liked the colour and thought it would look good, but then it had been back to blue.

As the door opened further, more and more memories hit her. The pictures on the walls, the school flags, the football trophies on the sideboard next to a photograph of them at graduation. A typical teenage boys room, some would say, and they'd be pretty much right. Danny had been a teenager when this was his room. The last time he'd stayed in here was the night before he left for the Marines, not long after they'd received their diplomas together, thrown their caps in the air, and celebrated by sharing a kiss under the bleachers for the very last time.

That night before he'd left was something that she'd never forget for as long as she lived, and maybe still be able to picture when she was dead too, depending on your beliefs. Sometimes, when she lay in bed at night, she thought about that night, about how it felt to kiss him, to feel him, to touch him. Sometimes it felt like only yesterday, and sometimes, like tonight, it felt like it had all been some dream that she just couldn't forget.

She remembered that some of the guys from school had organised a going-away party for him – nothing big, just their friends, and when they had gotten home that night he had taken her by the hand and led her up the stairs and into his room. There was nothing assuming about his actions, and the thing she felt most at the time was how perfectly natural it felt, and how she hadn't even thought to question it.

She had been so sure that night that they would always be in one another's life, that they would always be there for each other, no matter what. She was determined to prove that point now more than ever.

It was amazing what memories flooded her senses as she pushed the door open further, like an entire lifetime running through her mind, brought on by just the feel of the wood under her fingertips and the way the moon shone into the room from the window. She felt herself rise onto the balls of her feet, although why she was being so quiet was unclear. The house was empty apart from them, and it wasn't like…

She felt herself stop breathing as she stopped.

Everything stopped.

_Oh, God…_

_Danny._


	7. Chapter 7

He was sitting in an old chair next to a desk that Mary didn't think had ever been used for anything other than sitting on or for dumping school books on when they used to come in here after school. He was leant forwards, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

She felt the lump in her throat that she had been trying to swallow down ever since she had heard the news. It wouldn't leave her, instead forcing tears into her eyes that she hadn't wanted to cry because if she was falling apart she was no good to Danny.

Her hand came to her mouth, stifling a sob that was threatening to erupt at any moment now. Her eyes were glued to him, on him, and for a split second she remembered how she felt when Mike had called her and she thought something had happened to him.

But even in the darkness she could see him, the rise and fall of his chest that signified he was physically okay, and that was good, even if he looked like someone completely different in this moment. Through all of her life, he had always been the one to take care of her and protect her, but now… Now it was all different, it was the other way around.

She put one foot in front of the other, tiny steps taking her to him, and he had to know she was here. How could he not? Another step, and another… No sudden movements because she didn't want to scare him like a deer caught in headlights because if he was already in shock, the last thing he needed was a scare like that.

Her long legs took her to him in seconds, although part of her was begging _more time. More time, please…_ because she was flying blind here without one single notion of how to deal with this. Then she was there, standing before him with his head bowed down, and it reminded her of a school play they had performed in when they were in grade school.

She had been chosen to play a queen – which Danny thought was hilarious because he said she already got her own way all the time anyway. But when it came to going on stage, she remembered shaking with nerves. When he had seen how terrified she was, he had taken her hand and told her it would be easy, that she could tell people what to do with her eyes closed, and he knew that because she did so well with him. He was joking, of course, and the smile on his face let her know that. He hadn't had any dialogue in the entire play, but when he'd knelt in front of her as the script had called for, he'd looked up at her once, grinned, and then pulled his tongue out at her. The nerves were gone after that.

He didn't look up now.

He didn't do anything. He just sat in that same position, his head in his hands, no sound coming from him other than the mismatched and rhythmic breathing. Why did it have to be so silent? Silence scared her, she hated it, ever since… And Danny's silence? No, that was how she knew that something was very, very wrong, not that she needed the silence to tell her that in this particular instance.

If he smiled, she knew what to do. If he took her hand and kissed her, she knew what to do. If he was pissed, lashing out, she knew what to do. When he was silent…she didn't have a clue.

She gently crouched down to him, kneeling as quietly as she could, her legs folding beneath her as she reached out a hand to touch him. She had to pull it back, though, before it got too close to him to stifle another sob. She brushed away more tears, took another deep breath and lifted her hand again, seeing herself shaking in the moonlight filtering in to land in a streak across them both.

She told herself to stop, to be strong, because he needed her to be there for him now, but apparently herself was stubborn and was refusing to listen. She closed her eyes for just a second, just to catch her breath again, and her hand continued on. It was close to him now, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin into hers, until finally it was there.

Her hand rested on his cheek, feeling the rough stubble on his face and fighting memories of how it felt when he kissed her. That wasn't why she was here. That was selfish, to think of something trivial when something so devastating had happened. He didn't even flinch with her touch, not then, and not when her thumb stroked the smooth skin of his cheek.

"Danny?" she whispered. Had she whispered or was it just that she wanted to? All that seemed to happen was a release of breath because of the lump still in her throat.

"Danny?" she said again, and this time there was sound, uneven and breaking, but sound all the same.

He moved then, his hands coming down to his sides, arms falling like they were dead weight as he lifted his head to look at her.

If anyone ever asked Mary Connell when her heart broke, she would answer that it was right now, this exact moment.

She had been hurt before, so badly that she had wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear forever, like when their engagement had been broken off. It had always been Danny who hurt her, most of the time without him even knowing it, and she swore he had broken her heart a million times over the years. But this…

Have you ever witnessed something that literally made your chest hurt so much that you think you might die? Something that you know, with absolute certainty, that the memory of such a moment will haunt you every time you close your eyes for the rest of your life?

"Oh, God…" she heard herself say before she even realised she was speaking. _Great attempt at strong,_ she told herself, using her free hand to wipe away more tears that threatened her eyes.

The first thing she noticed was the eyes – well, that was the first thing she always noticed about him. Deep brown, like doe eyes, that bore into her so hard that sometimes made her think that he could read her mind. They were strong, perfect, and usually held her gaze in such a way that it made her want to live and die, all at the same time. But now? Now she was torn between wanting to look away and wanting to make sure she was really seeing him like this. All it took was one look at him usually and she would know exactly what mood he was in, because it was all there. But he was just… He was empty. He was broken. She usually saw this strong, vibrant, happy man who she knew would protect her with his life, and now he looked like he was someone else entirely.

"Mary?" he asked, quiet and unsure, and she felt herself nod. He wasn't crying in the general sense of the word, but the tears were there, held and locked in his eyes so tightly that she could see herself reflected there. Grief was never a pretty thing, because how could it be? It was consuming and overwhelming and devastating, and Mary was looking right at it.

She took his hands in hers. _Cold,_ was all she thought. He was so cold, even when just a second she had been able to feel his body heat. Had she been imagining that? Was that just another thing that happened when they together? He was still wearing exactly the same clothes she remembered seeing him in when she left the casino, looking smart and sexy and smiling in a way that was meant just for her, no matter who else was around.

She figured the cold came from the shock, and she tried rubbing her hands over his just to get the blood circulating the way it should be again. It didn't even feel like him either, she realised. Whenever she used to touch him, just to brush a piece of lint from his collar, or to give him a playful tap after a bad joke, she felt something. That something used to travel from her fingertips, up her arm and spread through her body to make her tingle and dizzy all over. That something used to make her smile for hours after whenever she thought of it.

Now all that she felt was pain, and fear, and frustration, and confusion, and she had to close her eyes to hold back the wave of nausea it brought.

He was holding her hand differently, too. Usually, his fingers intertwined with hers, so tightly that sometimes she'd have to ask him to loosen his grip a little, just enough so the restricted blood flow came back. Sometimes when he held her hand, when they were talking about something, he would use the pad of his thumb to stroke the skin on her palm, and she would never feel as safe as she did then. Now his hands were just hanging there, and she was the one squeezing his hand tight enough for it to make her fingers cramp.

She reached back to grab the blanket that was folded at the end of the bed, no more than a foot or so away from where they were right now, and pulled it off, a handful of the comforter coming with it. It was soft, and when she clenched it she remembered getting caught in a storm one afternoon when she was walking home from cheerleading practice. She remembered Danny meeting her halfway down the drive and hurrying her in and up the stairs to his bedroom. He had wrapped this blanket around her, telling her that it was one of the only things he had left of his mother, the same thing he told her whenever they wrapped themselves up in it at night, or when he gave it to her to take care of when he went into the Marines. It wasn't something he told her to get sympathy, and it seemed more for his own benefit than anything else, especially when he got that faraway look in his eyes and she'd give him a hug because he missed her so much. She loved that she was the only one he had ever told that to because it made her feel like she knew him better than anything or anyone else, which, of course, was true.

As she wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, she wondered if he thought of those times, too, before realising just how incredibly awful that sounded.

His eyes were still on her, blinking but not quite there, and her hand moved to the curve of his cheek. She was still shaking, but that was hardly like to go away anytime soon, and she was sure Danny wouldn't mind, if he noticed at all.

He had barely moved in the whole time she had been here, but when her hand touched him, this time there was a response. He closed his eyes, just briefly, just long enough for Mary to feel the tiniest bit of relief.

She lowered her hands to his again, and still they were limp in hers. She felt herself silently urging him to show some kind of sign that he was still there, still in this shell in front of her.

And then - and she thanked the Gods a hundred times for it – he finally gripped her hand back. Slowly, at first, his fingertips curling up ever so slightly to graze her skin and she held him a little tighter to let him know it was okay. His fingers moved, stretching in between hers so they were palm-to-palm, her hot, sticky nervous one against his cold, shocked, hesitant one.

And then they tightened around her hands, and Mary could almost hear a bone break but she couldn't feel it, because now she knew this was definitely Danny in front of her, albeit a different one, and there was just a little bit of hope that maybe she could help him because of that.

Her eyes had been focussed on their hands, on their entwined fingers and contrasting skin melding into each other, and when she looked up at him, he smiled. Not a real smile like she knew and loved, but something sad and defeated and altogether not right for his face.

"My…" he began, but he couldn't seem to finish.

Mary felt his hands tighten around hers again, and when she looked back down at their hands she could see his knuckles were white. She gripped him right back, as hard as she could, and nodded sadly.

He looked her in the eye again, and she saw his jaw set and tense, perfect and square, and if this was an entirely different situation she would be very tempted to kiss him.

"My father died," he told her, his face turning to something like disbelief, like it couldn't be true until he said it, and now he couldn't take it back and deny it any longer. It was like he was saying the words to taste them, to get used to saying them, because that was all he could ever say about his father now.

She didn't even see him crying, her arms were around him quicker than that, pulling him to her tightly before his face crumpled. She felt his arms embrace her, tightening around her waist and bringing her closer, making her unsteady on her knees as she tried to shuffle forward so her weight wasn't pressed into his. His head was buried in her shoulder dampening her shirt there with his tears, muffling any sound that seemed to be escaping him, her own silent sobbing making their bodies shake with pain and grief.

When his shoulders seemed to stop shuddering so violently, and when his grip seemed to ease, she dared to pull back. Their bodies disengaged, slowly but surely, and she ignored the pain sailing through her knees that had been numb for a good while now. Her hands, still shaking and unsteady, moved to the sides of his face, gently positioning him so she could look into his eyes.

_God, this is so hard,_ she thought to herself. She was physically hurting for him right now, seeing him in such pain that she couldn't take away for him. His eyes were swollen, red, puffy and bloodshot, and she couldn't stop herself from moving her face closer to his to kiss him, briefly and tenderly. That was all it was supposed to be – a show of support from a friend, but they both knew it was more, it was always more, even if they weren't acknowledging it right now. She tasted salt on his lips – or was it on hers? – before she caught another tear that fell from his eyes that almost made her break down again.

"I…" she began, swallowing her tears. "I don't know what to say to you, Danny. I don't know what to do," she confessed.

"Tell me everything's gonna be okay?" he asked her.

She was caught off-guard by the statement and she felt herself freeze at his request. She felt her mouth open, then close, then repeat the motion when no words came to her.

"Danny," she finally said, "I—"

"Please?" he said, cutting her off like he knew she couldn't make that promise. "Please?" he asked again. "Please, just…just tell me that it'll get better, that I'm not going to feel like this forever." He quietened, his hands sliding up her arms to her biceps and closing around the skin there. "Please?" he said again, quietly and desperately, his eyes begging for this.

She gulped back that ever-present lump in her throat, felt herself nodding to him in the darkness of the room as her hand travelled over his face. She realised that he was asking her to lie to him, and he knew she would be lying because she didn't know the answer. He had always known when she was lying, and now wouldn't be any different. This was what he wanted, what he needed. Mary had never been able to deny him anything.

"Everything's going to be okay, Danny," she told him, as steadily and firmly as her voice would allow. "I promise you," she told him. "It's going to be okay."

And that was the first and only time Mary Connell had ever lied to Danny McCoy in her entire life.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Well, this is the last chapter. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been reading this, and especially to the people who have reviewed. You guys rock!

* * *

The sun was just beginning to rise in Vegas. Mary could just make out the changing colours of the sky as she lay on the bed in Danny's old room. It was something she never thought she'd do again, not since that night before he went on tour.

She remembered being in the exact same position she was in now, her arm folded under the pillow, giving her a little lift so she could see over Danny's body lying next to her. Her body was curved into his, warmth filtering back and forth between them, seeping through their fully-clothed bodies.

Okay, so that was the one thing that was different. Clothes. That night there hadn't been any clothes. They had made love in the light of the moon, and then they'd just held one another until the sun came up, talking and biding time until he'd had to shower, put on his uniform and leave.

She wished they were back then right now. Growing up was highly over-rated, Mary thought. Back then, Danny wasn't devastated and she wasn't feeling useless, and that would have been a plus now. That night, it had been her holding back the tears all night, fearful of what the Marines had in store for her best friend, for the man she loved, and she knew that night had been one of the hardest of her whole life. But given the choice between reliving that night and doing this, she'd gladly go through it all over again. She'd do anything to stop him from feeling this way, even if she had to feel that way again, she'd do it ten-fold.

Danny shifted next to her, his arm moving from his side to her stomach, and she didn't even try to stop the butterflies fluttering inside of her because there was no point. No matter how much she told herself to get over it, she felt the same every time he touched her, so she decided to just accept it.

He wasn't sleeping, neither of them were. How could they? But she had gotten him to lie down. She had taken his hands, silently pulling him to his feet, and led him over to the bed. She had lain next to him, her hand moving to his cheek, the place where it still was now, her thumb running in slow circular movements over his skin because it was all she had. Words were useless, but she had her love, even if she doubted that it would be enough.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, his eyes flickering up to hers, sincerity flashing in them.

"For what?" she asked softly.

"For interrupting your vacation," he told her. "You always wanted to go to Hawaii."

_With you,_ a voice inside of her said. _I always wanted to go to Hawaii **with you.**_

"It doesn't matter," she told him, the hand on his cheek moving through his hair.

"I bet Jake was disappointed," he said, and she swore she could detect a sneer in his voice somewhere.

"I told you," she said firmly, her voice stronger now. "It doesn't matter, Danny. Nothing does." And she meant that whole-heartedly. It didn't matter because the only thing she could think about was right now, in this room, lying beside her, even if her brain kept trying to pull her into her past.

"You keep doing this, don't you?" he asked her, wonder in his eyes.

"Doing what?"

"I don't know," he said with a soft shrug. "Saving me?"

"Are you kidding me?" she asked incredulously. "If anything, it's the other way around."

"Not really," he said. "I mean, maybe once with…" he drifted off when he felt her body stiffen next to his and saw her eyes flicker around the room. "But, really, it was you. All our lives, you've been there, you know? If you weren't, I'd be someone completely different."

"Is that good or bad?" she asked, a hint of a smile in her voice.

"You tell me."

"You're a good person, Danny," she told him. "The best."

"Sometimes I think I'm okay," he said, turning his head to watch the lightening sky outside of the window. "And then…"

When he didn't continue, "And then…?" she prompted.

He turned back to look at her. "And then I think about how much I've hurt you, everything I've done that made you doubt how I feel about you."

She felt herself pulling away from him, even before she knew it. "Danny, it doesn't—"

"Matter?" he asked. "It **does** matter," he told her seriously, his face turning back to hers, the hand that held her hand moving to her face to touch her cheek. "God, it does…" he said quietly. "You've been the one person in my life I knew I could trust, no matter what. You were there whenever I needed you, and I never appreciated that, never appreciated **you**.

"When I came back from the Corps, I just…I didn't know what was going on. I just felt so…disconnected, to everything. It was so different over there, and you…you brought me back, made me realise that things were okay."

"I didn't do any of that, Danny," she told him with a soft shake of her head. "You did. You didn't need me."

"I did," he argued, eyes wide and pleading. "I still do."

"I wish that were true," she said, the words coming out in a mumble, and when she looked at him she seemed surprised that the words had been said aloud because she only ever really thought that in her head.

"It is," he said fiercely. "I need you in my life, Mary. Always." His hand moved to push back a piece of hair that fallen onto her face. "You really have no idea how special you are, do you?" he asked, although it came out as a statement since he already knew the answer.

"I'm not," was her response, just as he expected, along with the dipping of her face as her cheeks began to glow red.

"You are," he told her. "Just look at you…" he said, wonder in his voice and a smile on his face. "You're funny, you know, even when you don't even realise you are. You're smart, and strong, and sweet. And God, you're beautiful…"

He had tears in his eyes again, but now she wasn't quite sure why. "You just… You walk through that casino, and there were a hundred men, and probably a lot of women too, who couldn't take their eyes off you. Everyone who has ever met you has loved you. Don't you see that?"

She didn't reply, her face reddening further as she tried to turn her face into the pillow she was laying on.

"It's true," he told her. "My father…" he said, and for a second the words seemed to choke him. "He loves…" he stopped again, realising his mistake and closing his eyes for just a second. "…**Loved** you," he corrected. "You were like his own kid, you know? He'd tell me all the time, after I was born, he and my mom, they wanted a little sister for me. But once they met you, they didn't need another child because they thought of you as their own, especially my dad. He felt responsible for you, even before you came to live here."

"He was a good man," Mary said honestly. "You and him…you saved my life."

"Yeah," Danny agreed uneasily. "He **was** a good man." He shook his head to himself. "**Was**," he repeated. "It's strange to think of him in the past tense. To think he's never going to…" he trailed off again, his eyes moving back to the window and the changing colours of the skyline.

"I was so young when my mother died, you know?" he said wistfully. "I just remember her not being there anymore, and my father telling me she was in heaven and that she wasn't coming back. He made it sound so…peaceful there that it was almost a comfort. I don't have that now. Do you know what scares me the most? Sometimes…sometimes I forget her," he said sadly. "I forget what she looked like, how she smelt, how she hugged me when I woke up after a nightmare, or told me a bedtime story before I went to sleep. I forget what kind of a person she was." He looked back at her, tears in her eyes. "I don't want that to happen with him."

"It won't," she told him, her voice no more than a whisper as she wiped a tear that ran down her cheek.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"I just know."

"But what if it does?"

"It won't," she told him. "Not if you don't let it. Danny, you were so small when your mom passed, it's no wonder you forget the details. But you know she loved you, and you know you loved her. You remember that, don't you?"

"I guess so."

"You're older now," she pointed out. "You won't forget him, Danny, not for a long time."

"Do you want to know what's weird?" he said, "Every day I think about my mom, even though I can't remember her that well. I'll think about her without even realising it. I'll see some kid in the street with his mom, and I'll just stand there, thinking how I don't have mine. I think that, if I have kids, they'll never get to meet their grandmother. I'll hear someone say the word 'mom' and I think of her. Every wedding I've seen at work, I think about how she's not going to be at mine. Every Christmas, every birthday…it's there. It lessens, I guess, but it never goes away. And now…" he said, "I'm going to have that twice, aren't I?"

"Danny…" she said softly, taking his hand in hers.

He shook his head again, looking at the ceiling. "I feel like I've let him down."

"Why?" Mary questioned. "Danny, you never, ever let him down," she said firmly.

"I did," he told her. "He wanted me to go into the family business, but I didn't because I thought I was better than that. I thought I wanted bigger, better… I never even got the chance to tell him that I wanted to work with him again." He let out a sad, bitter laugh. "It's ironic. I decide to join the family business, and there's no family and maybe not even a business to join.

"And that wasn't the only thing," he said. "He loved my mom so…completely, you know?"

_Was that rhetorical?_ she asked herself, while she let out an all-knowing, all-powerful, "Yes," that just escaped without her knowledge.

He grinned at that, looking her in the eye. "But I didn't get it," he said. "He'd go to the cemetery every birthday, every anniversary, and just stand there for hours. And when he asked me to go with him, I'd just blow him off, or I'd go and wait there, looking at my watch every couple of minutes because I thought I had somewhere better to be. I didn't see why he went there. I didn't see the point. I didn't need to go to a grave to think about her. She wasn't there, not really."

"Maybe it was just something he felt he had to do," she suggested. "To honour her, to show her he was thinking of her. You can't see a thought, Danny."

"And I should have understood that," he told her. "Instead of acting like an ass and making out I had some other great use for my precious time."

He gazed at her with a faraway look in his eyes. "And he knew," he said simply.

"Knew what?" she asked.

"That you were it."

"'It'?" she asked. "What?"

He smiled, his hand moving to her face. "Everything," he said.

She shook her head and closed her eyes, "Don't," she told him, but his finger over her lips stopped anything further she was going to say.

"Before you even moved in here, he knew," Danny said. "You were always the one thing in my life that never changed. He made me promise, more times than I can count, that I wouldn't hurt you. He told me once that he saw himself in me. He saw himself watching my mother when you and I were together.

"The day after that I joined the Marines." He looked up at her. "But you already know that." He was quiet for a moment. "Even when I came back, he just sometimes used to look at me and ask 'what are you waiting for?' You know what? I could never give him an answer."

"We tried, Danny," she said quietly.

"No," he told her. "We didn't. Not really. He was so happy when we told him we were getting married. That was the one thing that I know made him proud of me."

"It wasn't," she told him. "He was proud of everything you've done."

He shook his head. "I let him down again," he told her. "I disappointed him when I let you tell me it wouldn't work, when I let you walk away."

She felt a tear slide down her cheek and she quickly caught it with the back of her hand. She pulled away from him, breaking the contact between their bodies as she turned to get away from him. This wasn't why she was here. "I can't," she told him, swinging her legs from the bed, only to have him reach out and grab her wrist, pulling her back to him.

"My father was right," he told her.

"Danny," she implored, "Not now. I can't do this now. I don't know if I can do this **ever**."

"We have to," he told her. "Because he told me that life was too short to not do the things I want to do, to not be with the person I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with. And God…" he said, tears in his eyes. "I know that now more than ever."

She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, clouding her vision and making his face blurry, like a dream she sometimes had where he was exactly these words to her, but right now, in this situation, it felt more like a nightmare.

"I want to be there for you, Danny," she told him. "I really, really want to be your friend and go through this with you. But…"

"But you don't believe me," he finished for her. "Do you?"

"I can't be your consolation prize again, Danny," she said. "It hurts too much. It hurts both of us."

"You've never been that."

"Come on," she reasoned. "When you're scared, when you're hurting, you come to me. And I want to there for you, but it just confuses things."

"That's not true."

"It is," she said sadly. "When you went away, both times, I know you were afraid of what would happen over there, and I don't blame you, and you came to me. When you got back, you were hurting so badly, you proposed, just because you were so afraid of being alone. When you were alone, all of those bad memories came back, all those horrible things that you saw and were part of…and I wanted to make it stop. You were so afraid of having nothing, that you wanted everything. I don't know if it was a conscious thing, but that night when you asked me to marry you…you offered me everything I ever wanted, everything I had told you I wanted. You used that against me, made it impossible for me to see things clearly, to see them how they really were. I'm not blaming you, Danny, really, because I should have known better."

"You did," he told her. "We postponed things, didn't we?"

"We did," she agreed, "But it didn't make things better. I knew you weren't ready for that."

"And you were?" he accused. "I wasn't the one who called things off. I may have been scared of committing to you, but it was only because I didn't want to hurt you. I've never been good enough for you, Mary, and I've always known that, but I wasn't the only one afraid. And I wasn't the one who was too scared to even try."

"Yeah," she said, "Because you fought so hard to change my mind."

"You had always believed in us, Mary. Always. When you stopped…I guess it made me doubt what I thought I knew. It made me question myself."

"And now, right when you're going through the hardest time of your life, suddenly you're seeing things clearly?"

"Not suddenly," he said. "I've known for a while, it's not exactly anything new to me. I just figured you were better off without me. Telling you how I felt, it made me feel selfish, to think about how I was feeling. For once in my life, I wanted to put you first."

"And now?"

"Now I'm being selfish," he said simply. "We've been doing this for so long, this merry-go-round of feelings and back and forth, I'm just… I'm too dizzy to keep doing this. I want to stop," he told her, his hand tight around hers. "I want you to stop with me."

For a moment, Mary didn't respond. She was trying to take it in, all of this information, all of these words, and she wanted so desperately to believe them, so much. And then she regained herself as she shook her head. "No," she told him, and maybe she was telling herself too. "This isn't why I came here. This isn't what we should be talking about."

"Why not?" he challenged.

"Because…" she began.

"Because my father just died?" he asked, and when she couldn't reply he placed a hand under her chin to lift her eyes to his. "That makes it exactly the right time, Mary, don't you see? My feelings for you have never changed, through everything. They've gotten stronger. I'm sick of pretending that they're not there, that you're not the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and that I'm okay seeing you every day without being able to tell you that you're the most important thing in my life."

"And you think it's been easy for me?" she asked him. "You want me, and then you don't. You're here, and then you're gone. You want to marry me, and then you don't. You keep saying how I'm the one you're 'supposed' to be with, Danny, but do you know what that tells me? You feel like you've let your dad down because we didn't work out, and now…now you're trying to make that up to him in some way, doing what you thought he wanted from you. It tells me that you're only doing this because everyone **thinks** we should be together.

"You know, I didn't just lose the guy I've loved my whole life when I gave you that ring back…I lost my best friend, and that hurt more than anything else. We've been trying, so hard, to get that back, and I **want** to get that back, but if you and I go down this road again… We're gone for good."

"Are we always going to hide behind that excuse, Mary?" he asked. "Or are we actually going to take a chance?"

"I don't know, Danny…" she said, shaking her head and pulling her hand from his so she could stand up, the more distance between them the better right now. "This all just…too much…"

"You know what?" he said, shuffling to the edge of the bed to sit before where she was standing. "I've heard every excuse you can think of. I've heard every excuse **I** can think of. But you know what I haven't heard you talking about?" She looked at him expectantly. "Jake," he said simply. "I haven't heard you mention him once in all of this."

Danny stood, "You know that you mean the world to me, Mary, and if you told me, just once, that you were with this guy for keeps, that he was who you wanted to be with…I'd step back, because all I've ever wanted was for you to be happy."

That was true, and she knew it. If she was being honest with herself, she'd have to admit Jake hadn't really entered her thoughts once since she got to this house, not since she'd seen him walk away.

He had moved closer to her again, his hands finding hers, surprising, comforting and scaring her all at the same time.

"I don't know what else to say to you," he said honestly, the redness of his tired eyes making her want to reach out and hold him. "Twelve hours ago, I thought I had pretty much everything figured out, you know? The casino was gonna be gone, I was going to work for my father, and I was going to wait until you were ready because I knew, I still know, that we'd end up together.

"Now… Now my father is gone, and everything I thought I knew is different. I don't want to be that person who always looks back on his life and wishes they had done something differently. I don't want to live with any regret or fear, not anymore.

"I don't know what will happen after tonight, when we have to go back to reality and live and breathe in a world where my father isn't going to be there to tell me how much of an idiot I'm being, or to bail me out of trouble I've managed to get myself into, or to just tell me that I'm doing something right when I don't have a clue. There is so much in my life that I don't know. But the one thing I do know…is that I love you."

Mary felt her breath catch in her throat as her heart pounded furiously against her chest, so hard she thought it might break out.

"That's the one thing I'm sure of," he continued. "It's the thing I've always been sure of, even if I was afraid of it. I **want** to spend the rest of my life with you. And it's not because I'm trying to prove something to someone, or because I want approval, and not because it's what's expected. I want to be with you because I love you, and because you love me. I can't be the bigger person here and tell you that I'll wait, because I don't want to, and I know you don't want to either."

Her eyes were filling with tears, so much that she could hardly see out of them, but she knew the sincerity in his eyes, in every part of him, that made her think that maybe…just maybe…

Screw it.

"Say it again…" she whispered.

"All of it?" he asked. "Or just the main part?"

"Just the main part."

One of his hands came up to push back a few strands of hair that had fallen loose. He pushed it behind her ear, his hand lingering on her cheek.

"I love you, Mary," he told her. "Absolutely, completely, seriously, painfully…"

She closed her eyes, waiting for the dream to end or for the pin to drop. When she opened them again, he was looking at her expectantly.

"I love you," she whispered.

And then his arms were around her, tight and restricting, but that was good, even when tears fell down her cheek onto his shoulder and she felt his shirt dampening where her head lay. She wasn't even quite sure why she was crying, but both of their lives had changed tonight, in so many different ways.

Danny pulled away, his eyes red and swollen, and Mary brought a hand up to his face. She leant in, and as light as a feather, her lips touched his. He responded in kind, a hand moving back up to her cheek, tilting her face up to his as his lips touched hers again. There was more behind this kiss, more force, more love, more certainty.

As they parted, her hand came up to find his, their fingers intertwining, and this was right. The sun was still coming up in the sky, filling the room with new light, new hope. Reds and gold's from its rays shone on them, warming them through the glass, as Mary led him to the door.

They passed down the halls, and this time there was no stopping, no looking back and remembering. There was no more time for contemplation, because looking back just made the future seem so impossible. She led him down the staircase and stopped, turning to face him as they reached the front door.

"I don't know if I can do this," he confided nervously.

"Do what?" she asked, the hand that was holding his gripping tighter.

"Open that door," he said. "Go outside. Go back to the world."

"You said that was what you wanted."

"If I go out there, I can't pretend that my father's going to open that door and walk in any minute. I go out there, and he's really gone." His eyes closed. "There's so much to do. I have to identify the…" He took a breath when he couldn't complete the sentence. "I have to organise the funeral, figure out what to do with the business, and—"

He stopped when her lips came to his again, her arms closing around his neck and cutting him off before he could go any further.

It was only a brief kiss, and when their lips parted his arms slid around her waist, her forehead resting on his with his eyes still closed.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough to do this," he confessed.

"You don't have to be," she whispered. "I can be strong enough for the both of us. You've always taken care of me, Danny, and now I'm going to take care of you."

He nodded, a small smile as he looked her in the eye. "Tell me everything's going to be okay?" he asked her.

She kissed him again, a little deeper than before but still brief and comforting, full of future and promise.

He was right, there was so much to do, most of it painful and they weren't looking forward to any of it. She didn't know how things would play out, if they could get through the next few days and the funeral, and the thing that came after that, and after that. They would find out if all of this had been worth it, the years of heartache and confusion, although she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

Mary cleared her throat, gently pulling back from him and placing a hand on either cheek. "Everything is going to be okay," she told him. And this time she meant it. After all, she had never been able to lie to him.

She took his hand in hers again, feeling his grip tight in hers as she laid her free hand on the door knob.

"Ready?" she asked.

He took a breath, and then nodded.

She opened the door to the sight of the three people she had left out there what felt like hours ago, all of them waiting patiently on the porch, all turning at the sound of movement, the light of the fully-risen sun shining down on them.

Danny and Mary walked out hand in hand, into the day.

A new beginning.

A new life.

The End


End file.
